Christ the King Lutheran Church - New Brighton, MN
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    • Contact Us
    • Life@CtK Blog
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  • Worship
    • Worship Online
    • Home Grown Worship
    • Servicio Cultivado en Casa
    • Drive-In Worship
    • Online Archives
    • Worship with Children
    • Special Services
  • Music
    • Virtual Choir
    • Music Ensembles
    • Music & Arts Series
  • Get Involved
    • Faith Formation >
      • Children, Youth and Family >
        • Children
        • Youth
        • Confirmation
        • Safe Boundaries Policy
      • Adult Faith Formation
      • Small Groups
    • Mission >
      • Global Mission
      • Local Mission
    • Community >
      • Community Garden
      • Christ the King Foundation
      • Faith Community Nurses
      • Social Ministry
    • Bread Oven Ministry
    • "The One Thing" for Racial Justice
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Follow Light                                                                 2nd Corinthians 4:6

12/22/2020

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Reflection for December 23rd, by Nate Crary, Director of Worship

In “Dear Church: A Love Letter from a Black Preacher to the Whitest Denomination in the US,”
​Lenny Duncan writes this about our church:

“During Advent, we spend an entire season struggling through the darkness looking toward the coming light. The primary symbol and image we use for the season is the anticipation of an emergence from darkness to light. We could focus more broadly on Holy Anticipation. Or the God Child being born into a world where empire will try to lay waste to him. Or a God who throws God’s own self upon the world, clothed in vulnerability and dependency. Or the place of unwed teenage mothers in our world. Or the slaughter of innocents by a leader grasping  for  power.  We  don’t  tend  to  focus  on  the  theme of refugees fleeing radical evil. Or preparing the way of the  Lord by  creating  conditions  more  conducive  to grace.  Nope.  We  have  reduced  the  Advent  season  to “from darkness to light,” a theme reinforced by repetition and tradition. And darkness is just another way of saying blackness—another symbol that equates blackness with evil and light (whiteness) with good.”

Why do so many of the favorite Advent and Christmas hymns we love to sing reinforce the idea of blackness being bad and whiteness being good? How have I been okay with this? What do I need to admit to myself in order to change? In what ways do we need to own up to what we’ve been singing for so long?

My prayer is that we no longer reduce the Advent season to themes of “from darkness to light,” but to themes that give power to and express beauty within the blackness that invites us into deeper relationship with God and with one another.  
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Christ the King Lutheran Church
1900 7th St. NW
New Brighton, MN 55112
Phone: 651-633-4674


Sunday Morning Online Worship:
  • Online Worship Livestream at 9:30 am  
  • Online Zoom Coffee Hour at 10:30 am

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